


Directionally Challenged

by Jarakrisafis



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-24
Updated: 2012-06-24
Packaged: 2017-11-08 11:27:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/442718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jarakrisafis/pseuds/Jarakrisafis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hot Spot is the head of a Search and Rescue team... It must be a cosmic joke that he can't find his own aft while looking in a mirror.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Directionally Challenged

::Admit it. You're lost.::

::I am not!::

The ambulance seemed to sink on its axle slightly as the car wiggled its aft in defiance and continued straight on. First Aid huffed, a cloud of exhaust fumes drifting up behind him as he trundled after his very much lost even if he failed to admit it leader.

::Yes you are. We're going the wrong way.:: He tried again, not that he expected to have much luck, but he at least wanted to get home before the next century.

'Get out and get some fresh air'. Ratchet had said.

'Go see the sights'. Hoist had said.

'Learn something new'. Prime had said as he agreed to the older medic's idea and ordered him out the door with Hot Spot as a guard.

Aid huffed as they went past yet another turn off that could conceivably have led them home, the current path only taking them even further away.

Well, he had got some fresh air, he had seen the sights, and the only thing he had learnt was that Hot Spot couldn't follow satellite navigation.

Primus forbid if anybody ever asked Defensor for directions.

* * *

Every mech on the Ark knows that even with built in sonar, satellite navigation and the advanced processor capabilities of a Cybertronian creation, Hot Spot couldn't find his own berth, let alone anything else, if he was given a highlighted, glowing, flashing and heavily outlined map.

And this wasn't the first time that the Protectobot leader had gotten his team lost. There was the memorable incident when he had gone out for a short drive with First Aid. They had got back two days later, exhausted and dishevelled having visited several neighbouring states, searched for the Ark around the base of the wrong mountain and First Aid attending to no less than seven human emergency calls.

Despite that the ambulance had been in high spirits when he rolled back into the medbay and asked for a tracking device to be installed on his leader.

Mechs who had heard that had merely laughed, thinking that he was joking. Thus the laugh was on them when the entire group vanished, only for a disgruntled Blades to turn up several hours later snarling something about idiot ground pounders and malfunctioning buckets of rust.

Since then it had become routine for the Protectobots to go missing at least one a human month, the members of the team by now resigned to the extended sightseeing when Hot Spot refused to acknowledge that he might, in fact, be going the wrong way.

So it was no real surprise when the team failed to turn up where they were meant to at the appointed time.

Ratchet vented air to calm himself as he pinged Hot Spots location transmitter and set out towards it, Protectobot recovery duty tended to fall to himself or Hoist, 'just in case they are actually hurt this time', pah, as if First Aid couldn't deal with any problems. 

Heading off road Ratchet was glad that despite the outer shell looking like an ambulance, the material it was made of was far more robust, otherwise he'd have got stuck in a ditch long ago.

Search and Rescue. It must be a cosmic joke, Ratchet has thought far too many times. It must be. For the pure irony that the leader of a search and rescue team can't find his own skid plate in a mirror.

“Ratchet!” The transmission rolled over him as he pulled up on a small ledge to view the valley floor from which the ping was originating. Defensor trundled over, picking his way over the trees, careful not to flatten them as he moved. 

“You're late and you are not where you are meant to be.” Ratchet pointed out, hands firmly attached to his hips, one foot tapping on the stone beneath him. “Well, let's get going shall we?”

Defensor had crouched down to the same level as the smaller medic and he was managing a credible apologetic expression as he shrugged slightly. Straightening up he strode away along the edge of the tree line, clearly confident that Ratchet would be following him. He stopped when it became apparent that the medic was not behind him.

“The Ark is that way.” Ratchet hadn't moved as he pointed almost a full one hundred and eighty degrees, his foot still tapping on the ground.

Defensor blinked, his optical array shuttering for a long moment, “Oh.” was all he said before he broke apart and all four proficient map reading members glared at the directionally challenged.

“Told you.” One of them muttered, although which one exactly was unclear, as they began to head the correct way.

Ratchet shook his helm as he filed that information away for future reference, gestalt combiner forms acquire coding from all members, and in Defensors case it seems that him turning up for battles in the right place has been pure luck, as he certainly got that bit of coding off Hot Spot.


End file.
